The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This panel has been restored, although not recently. It looks well and should be hung in its current condition. The frame may have received some fresh gilding at some point, but this has been beautifully done. The gilding to the work itself may be more original. There are two horizontal cracks that are visible but not unstable. There are also a few wormholes. The details throughout the figures are very healthy. There may be retouches in the blue of the gowns of the two women and in the dark clothing of the Saint to the right of Christ. It is difficult to identify restorations even under strong magnification, and none read strongly under ultraviolet light.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

First acknowledged by Offner as the “Master of the Two Madonnas”, this anonymous Florentine Master was later renamed by Klara Steinweg who identified him as author of the Madonna and Child with Two Angels then in the Lazzaroni collection, Paris.¹  Active in the latter half of the Trecento, the artist appears to have trained in the workshop of Orcagna though his later works display the influence of Andrea Bonaiuti and Cenni di Framcesco, with whom he collaborated on the fresco for the Palazzo Comunale di San Miniato, dated 1393, for which he completed the allegorical figures.² 

This Ecce Homo displays stylistic affinites with the Madonna of Humility, Museé des Beaux-Arts, Dijon and a painting of the same subject formerly in the Kisters collection, Basel, suggesting it too was executed in the artist's mature period.³

We are grateful to Sonia Chiodo for endorsing an attribution of this work to the Master of the Lazzaroni Madonna and suggesting it dates to at least the 1380s. 

1.   M. Boskovits, Pittura Fiorentina alla vigilia del Rinascimento 1370-1400, Florence 1975, p.239, note 169.
2.  Ibid., p.128, reproduced fig. 323.
3. Ibid., reproduced fig. 413.